


Plenary Session

by microdreams



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Dark Artefact Researcher Draco Malfoy, Getting Back Together, Harry Potter Epilogue What Epilogue | EWE, M/M, Magical Conferences, Minor Character Death, Past Relationship(s), Unspeakable Harry Potter, Unspeakable Hermione Granger
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-03-22
Updated: 2019-03-31
Packaged: 2019-11-06 03:47:41
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 4,861
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17932265
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/microdreams/pseuds/microdreams
Summary: His look is pleading, “How did I not see how much I’d been lying to myself?”





	1. Delegate

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Wine or Beer?”
> 
> Hermione wrinkles her nose. “Beer. We’re in Prague, Harry. Why the hell wouldn’t I?”
> 
> Harry wheels around into the room with a grin, takes a step to start across to the bar, and then promptly spins back to face Hermione twice as fast. His whole body is tense, his face pale, “Oh! No. No. No. No.”
> 
> Hermione covers his hand where it circles her wrist, and apparates them away.

“Wine or Beer?”

Hermione wrinkles her nose. “Beer. We’re in Prague, Harry. Why the hell wouldn’t I?”

Harry wheels around into the room with a grin, takes a step to start across to the bar, and then promptly spins back to face Hermione twice as fast. His whole body is tense, his face pale, “Oh! No. No. No. No.”

“Harry?" She glances across the hotel banqueting room over his shoulder and spots Malfoy right away. She looks at him with pity in her eyes, “Oh, Harry! Still?”

He nods and grabs her wrist, dragging them sideways from where they are stood until they are shielded by a large pot plant. “Fuck. What do I do?” He cranes his head around to see if Malfoy can see them, before looking back at her. His breathing is fast. “Hermione, I don’t think I can...”

Hermione covers his hand where it circles her wrist, and apparates them away.

*****

Harry stumbles a little as they land in a quiet alley. “The fuck?”

Hermione is already halfway out into the street, she looks back at him, "There's a nice little bar I know down here, you can still get me that beer."

*****

Once they are settled in a booth in the tiny bar, Hermione with a Krušovice, Harry with a Pilsner Urquell, she gives him a long appraising look. "I didn't realise. You seemed down, after, but I thought you'd moved on. I know you and Nathan didn't work out, but you and him seemed happy until recently. I even thought he might move in." She takes a sip of her beer, but Harry stays silent, staring down at his beer. She nudges his hand and waits until he looks up. Her voice is soft, "It's been over three years since Draco left."

He sighs and drops his forehead to the table.

"That's the thing Hermione. I don't think it is ever going to matter how long ago it was." His voice is muffled as he talks into the tabletop.

"I mean. I thought I'd moved on too. And Nate and I were good. I was happy. Until I realised I wasn't."

Harry groans, and then slowly sits back up before he continues, "You were right. I was going to ask Nate to move in. Just before we split.”

“It felt like it was the right time. We’d beeen dating nearly six months, he spent a lot of time at Grimmauld anyway ‘cause his flat mate was a dick, the lease on his flat was due for renewal soon. And I thought, ‘fuck it, I’ll ask him’. I started to look around the place with new eyes, tidy out the rooms, figure out where his furniture and stuff might go. Which is where it went to shit.”

Hermione is listening, he can tell, but she’s not interrupting. She can clearly see how difficult it is for him to say all this. When Draco left Harry had refused to talk about it at all, hadn’t wanted to. Not with Hermione, not with Ron. He’s even only briefly touched on it with his Mind Healer, and maybe he should have noticed that in itself was one major problem illustrated in that omission. He usually told her everything.

“I realised Nate would need an office at home.” Hermione twists her mouth, gives him an understanding look. “I hadn’t been in there since he left. Not even once. I just put a locking charm on the door and left it. Then when Nate was there and he asked I just said it was a storage room, old personal stuff I wasn’t ready to go through just yet. I think he thought it was maybe stuff of my Mum and Dad’s or Sirius’, and I didn’t disabuse him of the notion.”

He can feel the tears. In his eyes, in his chest, in his throat. He puffs out a large breath to try and clear them away.

“So I took a day off work, got some cardboard boxes and unlocked the door. Figured I’d pack anything left in there away, give it a clean. Maybe get some new furniture, or move some of the stuff from other rooms in. I actually went into it feeling quite positive. It felt like a fresh start. Properly drawing a line.”

“I don’t quite know what I expected to see. I mean, he’d taken all his things from everywhere else in the house. And he had in there too. But there were things left behind. Not his things, but mine. Or ones that belonged to the house.”

He can feel the tears ready to spill again, bites the inside of his lip. “There were particular books and papers he’d liked and picked out from the Black library. Like that one he loved on the magical weight of different curses? Some violets planted in that awful red mug, the one Seamus got me with “ _The Chosen Tea_ ” printed on it. That really swish umbrella of mine Draco point blank refused to relinquish. On the stove was an old cast iron kettle. He said tea tasted better from water boiled in it. It did too. Regulus’ old potion kit, the cauldron, flasks and beakers. One of Molly’s knitted blankets.”

He can feel the tears running down his cheeks now. “There were spaces on the wall, where he’d taken down his pictures, but there were three prints still up.” Hermione’s finger tips stray up over her mouth. She’d been in that room a couple of times, he’s pretty sure she knows what was there. He nods as he confirms it. “Those old wand wood tree illustrations we’d found in the attic." The Blacks owned the full set, but Draco had only took three down to put on the office wall. "Holly, Hawthorn and Elder. He’d left those up on the wall when he went.”

“And I took it all down. And then I cast cleaning spells. And then I put it all back exactly where it was. Put the cardboard boxes back in the loft.”

“I just couldn’t. It was like this physical reminder of how he’d touched my life. Been entwined with it. An echo of him. He’d removed every last bit of himself, but not taken a thing from me, from our life. And it broke me, Hermione. Since he'd left I’d had sex with other men in our bed, sat at the kitchen table morning after morning with Nate. I’d rearranged the living room, because I fucking hated the way Draco had it set up. And all that was fine. But seeing that, the way he’d left every single bit of our shared life behind. If he’d even taken the Holly print, or the bloody fucking umbrella it might have been better, you know? But it was like it all just washed off him, like it had never happened for him. He just stepped away and left this husk of what had been there.”

“And it just hit me, all of a sudden. How fucking unhappy I was. Nate is great. A nice guy, sexy as hell, funny, intelligent, he cared for me, fit into my life, got on with my friends. But I realised it all just felt like a pale imitation of the real thing.”

His look is pleading, “How did I not see how much I’d been lying to myself?”

Hermione ghosts her fingers over the back of Harry’s hand. “You had all of us convinced too. If that is any consolation. It probably isn’t, I realise.”

“That was the day before I split up with Nate. I just couldn’t do it to him, not once I realised how strong my feelings still were. It wouldn’t have been fair. The horrible thing was he didn’t even seem surprised. He was really upset, don’t get me wrong, but it felt like he’d kind of been waiting for it. And he never even knew about me and Draco. I think maybe he guessed there had once been someone else. Someone I loved.”

They sit in silence for a while. Drink their beer. Order another.

He can tell Hermione is turning things round in her mind. Recatergorising her experiences in light of the new information. Her voice is quiet when she finally breaks the silence.

“I don’t think he was ever leaving you, you know? He...look, I know we didn’t exactly get along. He was growing on me weirdly, right enough, but we still had a way to go. But, I always thought he loved you. I think it was just too much. London, the Prophet, his family, the memories, everything. I think he was leaving that, not you. It was wearing him away.” Her eyes are soft as she looks at him.

He puts his beer down with a shaking hand. “I thought that too. When he said it at first, said that he needed to move away.” He takes a breath. He’s never said this out loud to anyone but Draco.

“I said I would go with him. Said it in a heartbeat, I didn’t even have to think. And I know he needed his space, after what happened with the occupation of the Manor. He'd kept his own flat the whole time we were together, I knew he needed the reassurance of a space that was solely his, so I said I’d get a house nearby. There is a lake outside the city with some old wizarding summer houses. I said I could get one of those, live there. He could come at the weekends, I could visit him in the city. Said it would be better that way. Better than a long distance relationship between there and London. I said how he knew I hated being an Auror anyway, a break from London and the Ministry would do me good, let me work out what I wanted to do. I didn’t realise then that he was breaking it off with me completely.”

“I wanted everything with him, Hermione. A whole life. And it turns out he didn’t want a shred of it.”

“Yet, I get one unexpected glimpse of him across a room, and I fall to pieces." He laughs at how pathetic he feels, "I don't think I've ever loved anyone else like this. It’s fucking horrible.”

*****

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I have several chapters of this written already, and it has been staring at my accusingly in my drafts. I’m going to post what I have written every few days and get the rest done as I go.


	2. Panel

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Maybe he’s not coming. He might have been called away.” 
> 
> His voice sounds hopeful. 
> 
> “Maybe I’ll get called away. Are you sure all our current projects are OK ticking along by themselves? I’m sure I could pop back, check things over.” 
> 
> Hermione gives him a shove towards the doors as the organisers look at them expectantly. 
> 
> He grumbles, “Knowing my luck the only free seat will be right next to him.”

Hermione goes into organisation mode. She knows now how much this is hurting Harry, and makes it her job to get him get through the next three days of this conference as painlessly as possible.

“Right. We divide and conquer the panels and workshops still, as planned. But...we wait until the last minute to go in, if one of our chosen sessions has Malfoy in it, I take that one. Same with meals, we sit ourselves at the opposite end of the dining room to him and his colleagues, arrive late, leave early. If we need to do any networking I’ll take it on, you can go to a nearby bar or your room and write up notes from the panels and talks that we’ve been to.”

She huffs. “It would be a damn sight easier if we all weren’t such secretive bastards and actually published lists of who was doing what. Bloody Unspeakables. Think they are so much better than they are.”

She grins at Harry. It is a running joke of theirs. When his advanced wandless skills had got him noticed by the Unspeakables, along with the private research he’d been doing on wandlore and the natural channelling of magic, he’d jumped at the chance to transfer over. Officially he was still an Auror, his title was down as a Consultant Investigator, which meant his absence in the day to day cases was less noticeable.

Harry hadn’t actually been that surprised to discover, on his first day in Mysteries, that Hermione wasn’t actually the high level Ministry lawyer she seemed to be to the outside world. Every time the discussion of Unspeakables came up in conversation with their friends from then on they both bitched about them mercilessly. “A nightmare to work with’, ‘Unspeakably Rude’, ‘No better than they ought to be’, but weirdly it never seemed to arouse suspicion.

He was thrilled he’d got the ‘tap on the shoulder’ not long after Draco left the country, and for the first time in a long time he enjoyed his job. It was possibly that which had carried him through the grief of his broken relationship, and fooled those around him of his happiness. Allowed him to fool himself.

“Thanks ‘Mione.” He pulls her into a soft side hug as they enter the hotel doors. “I’m Unspeakably grateful.” She groans at the terrible joke.

“Horrible, Harry, just horrible.”

*****

Harry grabs himself a very early breakfast and then goes for a wander round the city. He’s never been to Prague before, and it feels like a waste to not experience it. He travels up the little funicular and enjoys the view of the bridges from Petrin tower. No mind that it keeps him away from the other conference attendees. He slopes back in five minutes before the Plenary session is due to start and sidles up to Hermione. 

“Any sign?”

“Neither hide nor hair. I reckon we slip into the hall right before they close the doors, and then we just take whatever seats are left.” She’s eyeing the doors. The stream of people is slowing to a trickle and the organisers are stood at the doors, ready to shut them behind the last attendees to enter.

“Maybe he’s not coming. He might have been called away.” He voice sounds hopeful. “Maybe I’ll get called away. Are you sure all our current projects are OK ticking along by themselves? I’m sure I could pop back, check things over.” She gives him a shove towards the doors as the organisers look at them expectantly. He grumbles, “Knowing my luck the only free seat will be right next to him.”

As they enter the lights are already dimming over the audience. The Lumos cast around the room fade down to a dull glow, just enough to see your own notes as you write. There are four people sat up on stage, chatting in the dark. The Chair, a very talented French Unspeakable that Harry has encountered in the course of his work, climbs the steps onto the stage and seems to check in with each of the speakers. She turns and gestures to the technical support at the side of the stage and the Lumos levels at the front increase to light the four invited speakers.

Harry can’t look away from the stage. Draco is still talking quietly to another other speaker beside him. He scribbles something down on a piece of paper and passes it across, and the woman smiles, nods and then leans over to talk to the witch on her other side. He’s in dark grey semi-formal robes. Not an Unspeakable then, unless someone's dress code has changed. He wonders if he's still based in Finland. Harry had written letters to him at first, after he left. Sent to a wizarding post office in the area he knew Draco had moved to. He hadn’t given Harry his address. He’d never sent Harry any reply.

The Chair starts talking, introducing the panellists for this Plenary Session. There hasn’t been an Unspeakable-led conference like this before, but strides are being made towards international cooperation, despite all the cloak and wand secrecy employed.

Draco is there to speak about Dark Artefacts, share the latest thinking on how magic is embedded into their fabric, how even when the object is removed echoes of it can still be sensed in the space that housed them. His current research is the offspring of those early scribblings in his office at Grimmauld.

As Harry watches him speak to the audience, and interact with the other speakers and Chair, he starts to get a sense of what Hermione meant when she spoke yesterday of Britain 'wearing him away'. He's still the Draco that Harry knew, but he's so very different too. He's more alive, more relaxed. He looks healthier. Happier. Confident in a way that dispels any notion of arrogance. He's beautiful.

It breaks Harry's heart a little more that Draco's got there without him. Needed to leave to become this wonderful confident man he sees on stage. It makes him proud of Draco in equal measure.

It strikes him then that he never really got a chance to know a Draco who wasn't either weighed down by the angry or unrealistic expectations and opinions of the world around him, or frozen by visceral fear.

Freedom looks good on him.

*****

Despite the difficulty of the situation, the volatility of his emotions, Harry finds himself drawn in by the speakers. He truly does love his job, and this stuff is fascinating. He tries to get his head in the right place, he’s been looking forward to this conference for weeks. The chair is skillful, linking the points the speakers make, framing the debate in wider terms. Harry finds himself scribbling furiously, particularly with regards to the presenter from New Zealand. Her work on the gathering and dispersing of natural magic has been a very useful reference for his own work. He wrote her a letter, back in the early days of his Unspeakable career and she very kindly replied to the questions he had posed. He sent her a copy of the resulting paper when it was published, along with his thanks.

The Chair wraps things up, with a view to taking a few questions. The lights come up a little in the auditorium, but Harry feels safe enough tucked away at the side. If he leans back a little to hide behind the very tall wizard sat beside him, then what of it? The discussion rolls around him, audience members contributing where relevant.

Harry is glancing through his notes, seeing if they actually make sense, when he tunes into the current question about trees and their capability to channel natural magic. He can sense what’s about to happen as the New Zealand speaker looks around the Auditorium and Hermione elbows him. He swears under his breath as he watches it unfold.

“This isn’t actually my specialist area, although of course it is related, however I do hope that we have the person here who would be able to give you more detail.” She finally locks eyes with Harry, smiles and gestures for him to stand, nodding. “Please, Unspeakable Potter, I believe your latest paper on the role of chlorophyll in the process of the embedding of natural magic into wand wood deals with this exact point?”

As Harry rises he tries not to look at Draco. He can still see him in his peripheral vision though. He looks ready to bolt. From the look on Draco’s face Harry imagines that if someone offered to apparate him away to a bar right this second, as Hermione had done for him, Draco would leap at the chance. But he’s trapped, on stage, with nowhere to run. Maybe Harry got the better deal here. At least he was already aware of Draco’s presence.

Harry brushes his fingers across his throat to start a Sonorous. It’s a bit of a show off move, to do it both wandless and non-verbally, but the memory of how that kind of thing had once got Draco weak at the knees spurs him to it. He’s not above being petty. Not by a long shot. The dip of Draco’s gaze away from Harry and down to his own hands is his small reward.

Harry responds to the question easily, as he goes on the words flow like liquid. This is his area, and although still new to the game, he knows his stuff. He’s still flattered though that Unspeakable Jones called on him, that she’s read his latest paper off her own bat. The questioner brings in further points, and Hana Jones responds to clarify the latest findings on the sites where magic naturally pools and what is known of what causes it. The discussion is vibrant, with the other witch and wizard on the panel joining in.

Draco is silent throughout, back ramrod straight, eyes averted.

Harry doesn’t address a single remark his way.


	3. Discussion

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Over the next days Harry can tell that Draco is avoiding him just as much as as he is avoiding Draco.

Over the next days Harry can tell that Draco is avoiding him just as much as as he is avoiding Draco. It is probably for the best. While he's doing a fine job of functioning and taking part while he can’t see the man, he doesn't know what he'd do if he had to speak to him.

He keeps striking it lucky until the final day.

Breakout session 3: ‘ _drawing down and dispersing_ ’ is in a smallish meeting room on the first floor. Harry is sat at the far side of the room, chatting to Hana about whether some little known and supposedly Muggle cultural traditions can be used as a basis to start examining the nature of early magical agriculture, when Draco walks in.

Hermione had overheard him that morning saying he would be in session 5: ‘ _patterns of power_ ’, so he’d thought himself safe here. Scratch that. And damn his luck, Hana calls him over. Most of the other seats are taken, and Harry can see Draco take a wild look around before realising it is either run rather indecorously out of the door, or sit with Hana and himself.

Walking over, Draco shakes Hana’s hand and then hesitates. Hana sees it and stands, gesturing to Harry, “Oh, Draco, let me introduce you.”

Harry decides to take the initiative, “It’s OK, we’ve already met, Hana,” he raises his eyebrow, gives a little nod at the man across from him. “Draco.” He extends his hand for a handshake, and is pleased to see it isn’t trembling as much as he feels it is. Draco takes it and holds it just a fraction too long.

“Ah, here at the conference? Or have you two worked together perhaps?” Hana is looking at him, so doesn't see the fleeting look of panic on Draco’s face as he stares as Harry. He covers it quickly, but Harry saw.

Draco seems to have lost the ability to speak, so Harry continues. “At school actually. We were at Hogwarts at the same time. In the same year.”

It is so pervasive in Britain that he often forgets that it wasn’t everyone else’s War. That they don’t know all the ins and outs, all the names. It would undoubtedly have become their problem too, over time. He doubts Riddle’s ambition stopped at the coast of Britain, or even at the fringes of Europe but, as it is, they never had to find out.

Hana looks between them curiously at that. She clearly knows enough to understand school wasn’t exactly a safe haven for Harry. “Oh! In a good way, or a bad way?” but she's still smiling. The details of their shared past hold little weight for her.

Harry laughs at that. Isn’t that just the question?

She glances at Draco and he manages a grimace that is almost a smile.

Draco is still silent, so it’s up to Harry again, “At school? Bad. After? I guess we got there in the end.”

Fortunately at this point the session Chair calls order, and then there isn’t time for anything more. At the coffee break Harry busies himself with a German architectural historian, who focuses particularly on sentience in buildings. He’s keen to know Harry's memories of Hogwarts, having plans himself to travel there this year to study it. Draco has attached himself to Hana and her conversation, he’s contributing very little, but seems to be nodding in all the right places.

******

Fleeing at the end of the session, Harry makes it almost all the way to the stairs before he hears hurried footsteps behind him.

“Harry! Please, wait!”

He supposes he might as well deal with it now. Then maybe go and find some more beer. He tries to rearrange his features in a way that is entirely at odds with his emotions, and turns.

Draco slows out of his stride and glides to a halt. He’s not saying anything and Harry takes the opportunity to look him over. Despite his obvious discomfort at being here, in this corridor with Harry, he does look good. He used to never look like he’d eaten a square meal. Now, while still lean, it is with a hint of muscle. Draco shifts a little, puts his hands in his pockets then takes them back out again.

“It’s good to see you with the Unspeakables. The research you are doing sounds fascinating.”

Harry is suddenly furious. “Really? That’s what you stopped me for? So we can exchange inane chit chat about our jobs? Fuck that, Draco.” He turns to leave but Draco catches his arm, dropping it again as soon as Harry stills.

“Please, Harry. Sorry. I.” He swallows. “I was going to write to you.” Harry barks out an incredulous laugh and turns towards Draco.

“No really, I have something I need to tell you. And you’re here, so I really should do it in person.” Harry shrugs his shoulders, eyebrows raised and makes a sort of ‘go on then’ motion. He needs Draco to say whatever it is so that he can get out of here. He’s a confused mess of longing and anger and he needs to be somewhere more private to deal with it.

“I’m moving back to Britain. For a year at most. I’ll be living with Mother. I come back in around a fortnight.”

Harry is shocked. “At the Manor?” He knows, everyone knows, what Draco thinks of his former home. Even people who only know of him through press reports know that much. He never sets foot there if he can avoid it. The idea he would move back is almost impossible.

“No. The London townhouse.” He lets out a nervous cough. “Mother is ill.”

“I’d heard. I haven’t seen her for a while, but I sent flowers.”

“Yes, she said you had.” Then Draco’s face crumples like paper, a kind of despair and grief written across it that Harry hasn’t seen on him since 6th Year. It is soul deep, and shattering to watch.

“Draco?” He puts an hand on the man’s arm. It suddenly hits him. ‘ _For a year at most_ ’ he had said. Does that mean...? No. Fuck. Please, no.

Draco schools his expression into something resembling calm. “The townhouse in closer to St Mungo’s. She needs to be there twice a week, and the longer Floo journey from the Manor is tiring her out. Apparition is out of the question. At the worst we could get a Muggle taxi to St Mungo’s in 15 minutes. So...”

“She’s that bad?” Harry whispers. Draco’s expression almost collapses again as he nods, but he holds it back, dropping his eyes.

“The treatment she’s having right now will help with her strength, give her longer, but they still think a year at the longest. So she may move back to the Manor. At...at the end. But for now. I’ll stay there with her in London.” 

Draco looks up at Harry with glassy eyes. “She doesn’t want it made public. If anyone asks then I am to say I am in London for work reasons, and she wants to spend time with me for the limited period I’m in the country. At some point we won’t be able to hide it, but she’d rather try and avoid the inevitable press interest for as long as possible. So, I’d be grateful if you could be discrete. Tell Hermione and Weasley of course, if you wish, but otherwise...”

“Of course. Fuck, I am so sorry, Draco.” He feels like he wants to hug him, but he thinks if he does then one or the other of them will break apart. He’s not sure which.

“Thank you.”

Hermione rounds the corner from the stairs and stops dead. Brushing the tears out of his eyes, Draco nods to her and then walks quickly back in the direction he came.

******

"Oh, God! Poor Draco." They are back in the little bar again.

"Yeah. Fuck. I need to go and see her. I've been avoiding it. I've seen her at Andi's, although not recently, but then there's the distraction of Teddy. I've not been to see her on my own." He feels so guilty. He and Narcissa had been on friendly terms. A weird by-product of Ministry enforced reconciliation efforts. It was through her that he'd met up with Draco again, back in the days when Draco was still Malfoy to him. Seeing her alone again after he left had felt too much.

"I could come with you? I mean, only if she's at the London house. I'm not going to Malfoy Manor. I love you, but not that much." She smiles as she says it, but Harry knows she means it. She has no desire to confront those demons.

"No. It's fine. But thanks. I should go by myself."


End file.
